Exodus collides with the Kedma

By Robin Wood.

This article discusses (ultimately!) two films about the founding of modern Israel: Otto Preminger’s Exodus(Hollywood, 1960), and Gitai’s Kedma(2002). Both titles are also the names of the ships from which the Israelis land in Palestine – legally, in Exodus, illegally (by just four days!) in Kedma. It will attempt the somewhat difficult and precarious feat (i.e., something to offend everyone) of examining the films from both a political and an aesthetic perspective: a more difficult balancing act than it sounds, as such strong feelings are involved. In view of this I find it indispensable that I begin by outlining my own political position, which some (I warn you now!) will find naive, unrealistic, idealistic, precarious and just plain unsatisfactory (‘A poor thing, but mine own’, as somebody said in Shakespeare somewhere).

1. What keeps us apart?

We all, whatever our nationality, religion, gender or sexual persuasion, share one thing: we are all human beings. Why can’t we accept this fundamental communality and stop seeing each other as enemies? I find it necessary, as preface (obvious as it will seem), to try to spell out the mindsets that separate us, all of which seem to me ridiculous and unnecessary, their roots analysable but so ingrained as to be beyond the discipline of analysis. I feel that I am, myself, in something of a privileged position here, as I don’t appear to ‘belong’ to anything but the human race (and somewhat reluctantly to that, every time I open my morning newspaper nowadays): I seem to be unencumbered by all the divisions that separate people. I have never thought of myself as ‘Canadian’, though I have lived in Canada for twenty-five years; I no longer think of myself as ‘British’, and would in fact wish to repudiate any contamination by the so-called ‘British tradition’, including and especially its monstrous historical imperialism, along with its moral narrow-mindedness. I relinquished any religious belief (with a great sigh of relief) long ago, around the age of seventeen. I am in fact happy to belong nowhere, knowing only what I am for and (especially) what I am against: most concretely, the United States of America under its present administration; more generally, organized religion, nationalism in all its forms, and corporate capitalism, which, according to many intelligent and reputable experts, if it remains unchecked, threatens to bring about the end of all life on our planet within the next few centuries.

A: Nationalism. Part of the problem is that one is talking about much more than the conscious level of commitment. Arguably, the intangibles are more important because more fundamental: all we grew up with and imbibed, as they say, with our mother’s milk – ‘long-ingrained force of habit, deep-rooted prejudices transmitted down through the generations and seldom submitted to conscious analysis. ‘Old habits die hard’ – especially old habits of thinking and feeling. I suppose I grew up with the saying ‘My country, right or wrong’, perhaps as early as Kindergarten: a profoundly evil notion to teach to vulnerable children. I can’t help sensing that contemporary Americans (those, at least, who vote for President Bush) grow up with it and never abandon it. Its relevance within the current Arab/Israeli situation is perhaps too obvious to need emphasis: a population turned out of their homes, another taking over homes to which they have a nominal historic right (going back to the Old Testament) after being dispersed and persecuted through the centuries. It’s a gulf that perhaps only a double-sided compassion and empathy could conceivably bridge, and that appears at the present time to be conspicuously lacking.

B: Religion.

Thank God, I’m an atheist – Luis Buñuel.

Q: If you met God, what would you say to him?A: I would say to him ‘Merde!’ – attrib. Jean-Paul Sartre.

I have never had a high opinion of myself, intellectually or morally, but I have to say that, simply as a fallible and often confused human being, I consider myself superior to fanatics, bigots, nationalists, and anyone who believes (or believes they believe) in the Fundamentalist religions, Christian, Jewish or Moslem. All three have proven themselves nothing short of monstrous in their cruelty, their repression of true human feeling, their lack of genuine humanity or empathy, the massive and abominable harms they have perpetrated through the centuries. Masquerading as some kind of ultimate good, and supported by various forms of unprovable ‘belief’ in a monstrous divinity, they have revealed themselves as the epitome of evil. Consider the following: Catholicism has given us the Spanish Inquisition, tortures, executions; Puritanism has given us the New England witch burnings; Judaism has sentenced all practising homosexuals to fire, brimstone and eternal torments as punishment for loving each other (see the Sodom and Gomorrah myth, apparently interpreted by Jewish Fundamentalism as literal truth), together with sanctioning the hideous oppression of women (see Gitai’s Kadosh [1999]); and Moslems have endorsed and practised the suicide bombings in Israel, apparently in the certainty of going straight to eternal bliss and simultaneously killing numerous innocent people with no less right to live than they have. I have been told by adherents of these persuasions that some at least of these horrors (for example, the Spanish Inquisition) are not essential to the religion or willed by God but were the unfortunate inspirations of misguided fanatics (e.g. certain over-enthusiastic Popes). My point is that they were the result of certitude – ‘the certitude of belief that has no firm or unequivocal foundation. If you believe, then you are entitled to do what you see fit in the name of that belief, and no holds are barred. But isn’t, perhaps, the great attraction of these religions that they can’t be proven? If they could, they would lose their appeal. The fact of believing, like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty’s ability to memorize ten impossible things before breakfast, proves the believer’s stamina and ‘faith’.

But the whole basis of religion strikes me as ridiculous. It consists of ancient texts written in a world totally alien to our own, hence no longer relevant to it. I suppose one could interpret some of them figuratively, or as allegories: Goliath could be corporate capitalism, David a new Socialism saving the planet from global warming. But that doesn’t amount to more than a newspaper cartoon with the appropriate labels. Certainly the man called Jesus had some good things to say, along with some pretty silly ones (why blast a fig tree because it didn’t supply you with fruit?). But, in so far as he existed (and even that has been called into question), he was only human. Christianity tells me I should be eternally grateful to him because he died for me, but that qualifies as emotional blackmail, and certainly I never asked him to. If he had consulted me I would have advised strongly against it, and think of all the trouble that would have saved.

Doubtless these texts had meaning within the period and country in which they were written (the Jewish texts – ‘the Christian ‘Old Testament’ – ‘clearly in periods of terrible oppression, which has been renewed through the centuries, culminating in the Holocaust). What god (presumed and referred to as ‘benevolent’) could consciously, knowing perfectly what he was doing, omniscient, with past, present and future already known, humans having free will yet choosing what this god knew they would choose, create a world in which we drop atomic bombs on each other, practise genocide, killing millions off in concentration camps, torture and murder in the name of religion? A god that, in the doublethink of Christianity, allows his creation freedom of choice yet knows from the outset exactly what it will choose? – ‘a ‘mystery’ indeed (believers always fall back on the word ‘mystery’) which in fact sounds remarkably like the ‘doublethink’ of Orwell’s 1984. How much simpler and more logical to imagine some blind, incoherent force endlessly experimenting, with the human race as one of its experiments (at time of writing, in the era of George Bush and the dominance of the United States, it seems one of its worst failures). It seems, at least, an extraordinarily unsuccessful one (despite Mozart, Shakespeare, Einstein and conceivably Jesus if he ever actually existed – ‘despite the glories of human achievement): an ‘experiment’, according to many reputable scientists, likely to produce not merely its own demise but the end of all life on the planet: no further ‘experiments’: not even a cockroach will survive for further evolution. (On a personal note: As I approach my seventy-fifth year I feel reconciled to the idea of ceasing to exist, although I feel no great satisfaction with my life. I’ve messed up so many things, but, given a second chance, I would probably mess them up all over again. I certainly have no expectations of any future life, and don’t think I deserve either eternal bliss or eternal damnation).

It seems uncertain just what role religion actually plays in the daily lives of ‘typical’ Palestinians and Israelis. Perhaps we exaggerate its influence, perhaps it offers simply a pretext for the horrors about which we read. There is only one reference to religion in Kedma, and it occurs when one Israeli tells another that he no longer believes in God.. Why don’t the Arabs and Israelis, instead of persecuting each other, blowing themselves and innocent others up, and fostering mutual hatred and distrust, invite each other into their homes, explore the possibility of friendship and mutual acceptance, and, above all, encourage intermarriage (the surest way to eventual peace)? – ‘with goodwill on both sides, a mutual respect for and interest in each other’s culture and customs, with just a little human generosity, give-and-take, the readiness to accept and respect difference, the recognition that one religion (quite logically) has no more claim to ‘truth’ than the other. (I don’t suppose one could stretch this to the recognition that logically neither has any claim to ‘truth’ whatever). In any case, the Palestinians must realize that the Israelis are not going to pack up and go away (to where?), no matter how many suicide bombers murder them, and the Israelis should accept that the Palestinians are human beings and that there must be some grounds on which they could meet, however precarious and unstable.

One marvellous step has recently been taken towards exactly this, apparently with great success, though within a very limited arena: Daniel Barenboim’s construction (along with the late Edward Said and the participation of YoYo Ma) of the ‘West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’, a full symphony orchestra composed of equal numbers of Israelis and Palestinians. Its members do not merely come together to play concerts – ‘they live together, practise together, eat together, discuss together. A magnificent gesture, at once symbolic and practical. The orchestra has, of course, been assembled in Europe (their first recording was made, appropriately, in Geneva, traditional home of the United Nations). Barenboim has declared that his ambition is to give a concert in Jerusalem, and may it come to pass soon. Meanwhile we can all show our support by buying that first recording, a two-disc set composed of a CD and a DVD, enabling one to both hear and see the orchestra, accompanied by a fascinating and inspirational documentary (it moved me to tears at many points) about the formation of the orchestra, and another ‘extra’, a conversation between Barenboim and Said. You will also get a superb performance of the Tchaikovsky 5th, among the best on record. May one hope that the concert in Jerusalem, if and when it comes to pass, will have as its climax the Beethoven ‘Choral’ symphony, with its setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy (‘All mankind are brothers beneath your wings’) – and, of course, a multi-cultural chorus.

This splendid gesture might be taken as a model for more such gestures: the formation within Israel of other groups along the same lines, whether musical, political or merely social. What about developing communities based upon the traditional kibbutz but shared equally by the races, in an encompassing atmosphere of mutual acceptance, tolerance and interest, with complete freedom of intercourse, sharing of accommodation, equal participation in activities? Has this been tried and failed? If so, why not try again, and keep trying? An outsider’s view, of course: I have never been to Israel, and the idealism I am trying to project may appear merely ridiculous to insiders. But isn’t anything worth trying, given the existing situation? I have the good fortune to live in a city (Toronto) that regards itself as a multicultural community, though it is very far from having reached the kind of ideal that phrase embodies. New immigrants, needing the comfort and reassurance of familiarity, automatically form ghettoes; unthinking, deeply entrenched prejudice against non-whites makes it difficult for many to find jobs, promotion or ‘upward mobility’, and unemployment remains common among persons of colour. But at least there is a start: one sees, especially, young people mixing, forming multi-racial groups, white, black, middle-Eastern, and it is not uncommon to see, in public and unashamed, male/female relationships between whites and non-whites. Perhaps such things are also common in Israel? They should be, and should also be encouraged.

It will be clear from the above that I am indeed an idealist, and I make no apology for that: I believe that we need ideals even if we suspect that (given human nature) they can never be reached. Religious people can’t be idealists. Idealism belongs to this world, not the next. If you’re religious you have to believe that your religion is the only true one and everyone else will go to Hell, or to Nothingness, and what sort of ideal is that?

The Films.

Let me say at the outset that this will not be one of those ‘This film is great, that one is terrible’ comparisons – ‘as some might expect from finding a Hollywood epic (‘entertainment’) juxtaposed with an Israeli ‘art house’ film (‘serious’). Though I find Exodus in some ways flawed, I am a great admirer of both these films, which are among their directors’ finest (one might claim Preminger and Gitai as the two greatest Jewish directors, were it not for Max Ophuls). Given the present situation, the (qualified) optimism of Exodus may seem naive and untenable, but it is important to bear in mind that forty-five years have gone by since it was released, while Gitai’s film is very much attuned to our contemporary despair and rage. I shall begin by showing what the two films have in common (not much), and what separates them (a very great deal).

In common:

1. Both were filmed wholly (Kedma) or mainly (Exodus, part taking place on Cyprus) on location in Israel.

2. Both titles refer to ships on which Israelis travelled to Palestine (‘Kedma’ means ‘To the East’).

3. The first half of Exodus roughly corresponds (in terms of time span) to the action of Kedma – ‘the arrival of a shipload of Israelis in Palestine.

4. In both films the Israelis’ landing is opposed by the British: violently in Kedma, peacefully in Exodus, where the benevolent British commander General Sutherland /Ralph Richardson, in one of the film’s many memorable performances) regrets that he must obey his superiors’ orders, then flies to Britain to obtain permission for the Israeli landing, losing his position in the process.

5. The British occupation ends in the course of both films – ‘about halfway through the lengthy narrative of Exodus, with the sequence of the United Nations’ decision in favour of partition, quite early in Kedma (the helpful ‘extra’ on the DVD informs us that the British moved out exactly four days after the ‘illegal’ Israeli landing!).

6. Both films inevitably confront the conflicts between the Israelis and the Arabs, though in very different ways and with very different implications.

7. Both directors favour long takes, Preminger’s within ‘the Hollywood codes’ but stretching them to their limits, Gitai’s greatly surpassing them (see, most obviously, the film’s astonishing climactic ten-minute take).

Based on a world-famous bestseller / Original screenplay, Gitai and collaborator

Sense of orderliness and control, reflected in Preminger’s magisterial mise-en-scene / Sense of chaos, everything out of control, reflected in the seemingly improvisational, jagged direction (though Gitai’s many remarkable sequence-shots must have been carefully planned and rehearsed)

Optimism for the future, though obstacles still to be overcome / Total despair, obstacles seemingly insuperable

Two romantic love stories developed and resolved through film, one happily, one sadly / Two male-female relationships, disturbed, tragic and unresolved

When Exodus came out in 1960, it was hailed in Cahiers du Cinema as Preminger’s first ‘committed’ movie. This is fair enough overall: the director is unmistakably and unambiguously committed to the Jewish cause. That granted, however, it has (equally unmistakably) all the character of a Preminger film, above all his customary analytical distance. Most of his films are distinguished from ‘typical’ Hollywood practice by the relative freedom of judgement he grants his audience. This is true even in a film like Angel Face (his first masterpiece, 1952): Jean Simmons is responsible for the deaths of four people (including her own), yet her behaviour, pathological as it may be, is nowhere judged within the film: no ‘sinister; lighting, no high- or low-angle shots, no crashing, discordant music: judgement is left to the spectator. Preminger carried this policy to its most extreme in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), in which we are never allowed near the jury and its members are never individualized, quite contrary to typical Hollywood practice: the jury is the film’s audience, and everyone (including the James Stewart character, the nominal ‘hero’) is on trial. Exodus actually offers us a central identification figure in the initially wary and uncommitted Kitty, who at first ‘feels uneasy’ with Jewish people, but ends up marrying one. Eva Marie Saint is absent from many sequences, but her progress to commitment is the thread that ties the film’s multiple narratives together. Even here, however, Preminger is true to himself: the film’s opening shot, on Cyprus, panning over the landscape as the voice of a guide delivers a travel speech, seems clearly subjective, but ends with the camera revealing Kitty as she listens: we are invited from the outset to look at her, judge her, as much as identify with her. She functions more as the audience’s way in, our means of learning about the issues, about the problems, rather than as a simple emotional identification-figure.

Preminger’s objectivity largely fails (by omission) in the film’s treatment of the Arab side of the conflict. We are permitted no scene in which the Arabs are allowed a real voice: we are allowed only John Derek (the friendly Arab, Paul Newman’s best friend from childhood), in the film’s worst performance, looking very handsome and totally ineffectual, his murder implicitly attributed to a wicked Nazi (Marius Goring) who is ‘teaching’ the Arabs how to deal with Jews, from his long experience. There is nothing corresponding, on the Arab side, to the truly Premingerian analysis of Jewish internal politics. Interesting, how the political failure coincides with a partial aesthetic failure: as the politics falters, so does the mise-en-scene, the (relatively brief) scenes involving Derek and Goring seeming perfunctory, awkward, strained.

Consider, as exemplary, the scene in which Ari (Newman) and Akiva (David Opatoshu) discuss policy in relation to the British occupation, Ari as a leader of the Haganah (non-violence, negotiation), Opatoshu as the head of the Irgun (violence, terrorism). Neither actor is privileged with close-ups; each is allowed a voice; no decision is reached. The spectator is given both sides of the argument and left to judge. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the presentation of Dov Landau (Sal Mineo, in a performance of great intensity), committed unquestioningly to the Irgun and among those responsible for the notorious (historically accurate) blowing up of the King David Hotel and the deaths of a great many ‘innocent’ people, mainly British, many simply on holiday or interested in the ‘new’ country. Dov has previously been presented very sympathetically (the justly famous interrogation and acceptance by the Irgun builds to a climax of stunning intensity); he goes unpunished and is allowed to survive the film’s action, unrepentant and still fanatical. Any judgement of him is ours, Preminger refusing all directorial comment.

Exodus today must be seen as essentially a ‘period’ film. I suppose in 1960 it was still possible to believe that, with time and mutual goodwill, the problems of partition could be solved. In fact, forty-five years later, there has been plenty of the former and precious little of the latter. There was, hypothetically at least, a choice between partition and integration. The former could only cause resentment and hostility, the latter appears (probably quite correctly) never to have been seriously considered, although today it seems to be the one hope, albeit remote, demanding enormous goodwill on both sides. I have been unable to discover whether Lee J. Cobb’s big speech to the enormous crowd on the night when the United Nations decision in favour of partition was announced has any historical veracity. (He tells the Arab populace, passionately, ‘Stay in your homes, stay in your shops…’). The theme is not taken up as a possibility, the implication being (unfortunately) that the Arabs were being unreasonable and what followed was all their fault.

Despite its partial failure (restricted in any case to the film’s second half), Exodus remains a great film. It need not surprise us greatly that its unqualified success (there are numerous qualified ones) is restricted to the first third, on Cyprus, on the ‘Exodus’ itself, as the fate of the Jewish refugees is determined: a great director in complete control of his subject, one of the cinema’s great masters of mise-en-scène.

Despite the emphasis on suffering and near-starvation, the crowd on the Exodus, under trusted and reliable leaders, maintains discipline, optimism and faith, all but a few voting in favour of a hunger strike to force the British to let them move on to Israel. Preminger’s direction reflects this in its orderliness, precision and command, preserving a sense of eventual security that overrides the suffering. On the Kedma, at the beginning of Gitai’s film, everyone is exhausted and depressed, there is no confidence in a future, little sense of community, only of small, shifting groups, and no sense at all of organization. The extremely complex long takes (the opening shot taking one from the sleeping bunks, around obstacles, up above to the crowded deck and forward around it) are disturbing rather than reassuring, emphasizing instability and uncertainty – ‘quite distinct from Preminger’s magisterial control of the camera. We are introduced first to Janusz, who in the film’s final scene will become its voice, but at this stage he is not privileged, Guitai briefly establishing his relationship with Rosa before, on landing, they simply become figures in a disordered group. Then, attacked by British troops (according to the information on the DVD’s ‘extra’, the vote for partition and the British withdrawal occurred only four days after the landing), the group is dispersed and Rosa briefly lost. There is no order, no clear sense of direction, no discipline, no effective leadership.

The fundamental and extreme difference between the two films becomes clear, especially when one thinks of their implied audiences, their desires and expectations: Exodus in 1960, directed by a cosmopolitan Jew, was made for a world audience, to present the Israeli cause with the greatest possible clarity and with a fervent belief in its justice: hence popular stars, identification figures, a strong, orderly, progressive narrative. Kedma, in 2002, co-written and directed by an Israeli, was made primarily for an Israeli audience to argue that the country’s present turmoil and political confusion was already implicit in the chaos of its foundation – ‘for which even the word ‘foundation’ seems a misleading term, when nothing, by the film’s end, has been founded and the chaos remains, greatly multiplied. Think of the outcry there would have been if anyone but an Israeli had dared offer such a statement! – ‘Guitai is surely his country’s severest, most uncompromising critic.

The film, which appears on first viewing (de)constructed to parallel the disorder it depicts, reveals on further viewings certain threads that hold it precariously together, personified in the two male characters, Janusz and Menahem, who (with their respective partners) give it a rough, jagged and fragmented structure: Janusz is the mature adult who ends in uncontrollable hysteria, verging on insanity; Menahem is the young man (scarcely more than a boy) who first claims to be a cantor (and can sing like one), then, shockingly, reveals his lust for killing (fuelled by his past under persecution), then dies before he can fire a shot.

Gitai treats the Jewish/Arab conflict (at its genesis, the film taking place within an unspecified but clearly very limited time span) with consummate brutality. When the Israelis first cohere into some kind of organized group, they are promptly given a lecture on ‘How to use a sten gun’. There follow three encounters: (1) A group of Israelis, including Menahem (returning to their traditional promised land or invading the territory of others, as you like to think of it), encounters a donkey team of Arabs led and apparently organized and commanded by a woman. They appear to have been displaced by the invasion, but this is not entirely clear (I take it Gitai means us to share the point-of-view of the Jews, who understand no more than we do). When they are revealed as the ‘invaders’, Menahem promptly draws his gun, but is prevented from starting a suicidal skirmish by the woman leader, who tells her followers to ‘leave them alone’. (2) The battle on the hillside. Again, we share the Jewish refugees’ position, hence are allowed little insight into rights and wrongs: it’s a war, kill the enemy. We don’t know who started it, whether it was ‘necessary’, whether it was worth dying for (many die, on both sides). What it certainly is, is a mess, perhaps quite unnecessary (but what is ‘necessary’?). (3) The Arab who (in his own country, and for no crime) is arrested and held prisoner. This seems to me a key moment in the film: the old man is innocent of any crime but is automatically treated as ‘the enemy’. He protests that all his land has been taken away from him, that he’s lost everything and has nowhere to go, on the strength of which he is held prisoner. We are clearly invited to reflect that, here, the Jews are treating the Arabs (who, presumably, know little about European history) rather (if less drastically) as the Nazis treated the Jews: he is, simply, again, automatically classified as the ‘Other’. Throughout the scene of his interrogation we see Menahem’s body (in longshot, through the doorway) in the background: a wonderful statement about the existential absurdity of the scenes in which he appears. Gitai then gives us the results of this blindness in the old man’s curse on Israelis following his release, with the promise that his people will endure longer than they will. The film seems to offer no hope whatever for reconciliation, for a positive, progressive, mutual future.

This reading seems confirmed by the ending, with its astonishing ten-minute tracking-shot following Janusz as he breaks down and rambles around the static vehicles that will soon depart for the next battle: for Gitai, a tour de force of organization, with constant camera movement and complex background interaction. It opens with the elderly Israeli who has tried throughout to maintain some kind of order attempting to control and organize the departure, then shifts from him to Janusz. His breakdown is, as I have suggested, the climax and ultimate statement of the film. Rosa, silent, similarly traumatized by what she has been through and by her lover/protector’s breakdown, can no longer help him but stares in silence as he passes and repasses her. Amid the chaos and the useless slaughter, the alien scenery, the hostility, the futility, he collapses into the whole history of the Jewish people, without a country, now once more isolated in yet another alien and extremely ugly and cruel world, his displacement, his identity, his very right to existence called into question. What I find most remarkable is its parallel/contrast with the end of Exodus: both films culminate in a climactic, summarizing speech, filmed in a single ten-minute take in Kedma, in two long takes broken only by a shot of the bodies (Jewish, Arab) in the common grave in Exodus, with, as the speech ends, the trucks moving away to the next battle in the background: the same action, the directly opposite effect. The end of Exodus suggests tragedy in the present, hope for a better future; the end of Kedma suggests despair in the present and barely minimal hope for the future. Is there any way whatever of reading Gitai’s film more positively? Perhaps, as a challenge: ‘This is what you did, now think positively about what you do next.’

Robin Wood was a groundbreaking critic and historian of cinema.Robin Wood’s essays in Film International 2003-07: